Here are PSP member replies:
“I would think that a small potty is far more user-friendly to the kid. they're able to hop on and off by themselves, there is no risk of falling off (or worry of falling in).... I think if I were that small i'd have a hard time relaxing on the full size potty!
I don't have any potty experience yet, but was thinking of getting one soon and I had talked to a good friend who is a phD in child development and these were her thoughts as well.”
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“Potty opinions will vary, I'm sure. For us, we went with the small version...for a while...BUT I became very sick of cleaning it out almost immediately...so we switched to a cushy potty seat that fits over the regular size adult potty, with a step stool. Our daughter loved it, and this worked well for us. All said, it's more sanitary and cleaning is as easy as a flush. Also, my babysitter did not like the idea of having to clean out the toddler potty.
Also, children are sometimes scared of the flushing noise of regular toilets, and also like the "ownership" factor of a small potty. That said, I was just as happy with the simple Bjorn model that cost $10 as I was with the fancier and bigger Graco one that has a detachable seat, a lid, etc. And perhaps the biggest advantage of a small one, I realize as I write this, is that it can be moved around to be close to the child, which was the real turning point in the toilet - training process for us.”
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“We potty trained our daughter at 2 years 2 months using the "Toilet Training in Less Than a Day" book. That book suggests the small potty, but I decided to use the insert on top of the toilet both for the selfish reason that I didn't want to have to clean the small potty but also because my daughter really liked to imitate what we did, including I hoped using the big toilet. Anyway, it worked, and she was about 90% potty trained in about 2 days. She did require some help using the stepstool to get on the toilet for a while, but that didn't bother me. Eventually she could do it all herself.”
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“While our son used the little potty briefly at the very beginning of his forays into potty training, he was never really into it - he seemed much happier when he started using the regular toilet with the insert seat (we got the Bjorn model) or with just a step-stool to pee. However, I'm holding onto the little potty in case my baby daughter eventually likes it - as one poster said, all kids are different so you never know!
